Carole Meyers, First Female Rabbi In L.a., Dies At 50

Rabbi Carole Meyers, who became the first female rabbi to lead a congregation in the Los Angeles area when she took over Temple Sinai of Glendale in 1986, has died. She was 50.

Rabbi Meyers died of bone cancer Thursday at her suburban Los Angeles home, 10 weeks after she had been diagnosed with the disease, said her husband, U.S. Magistrate Judge Ralph Zarefsky.

FOR THE RECORD - Published correction ran Tuesday, July 31, 2007.In some editions of Monday's Local section, the obituary for Rabbi Carole Meyers was incomplete. The final paragraph should have included that she is survived by her stepfather, Daniel Zwick of Washington. (Text corrected.)

A vibrant preacher and insightful teacher who called herself a liberal activist, she resigned in 2001 to devote more time to her husband and two children. But she remained a leader in the Jewish Reform movement, serving on the board of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, developing curriculum for Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles and presiding at marriages and bar and bat mitzvahs.

The appointment of a 29-year-old single woman three years removed from seminary as solo rabbi was uncommon for the time.

"What was unusual, to my mind, was what an unusual person Carole was," Rabbi Richard Levy, director of the School of Rabbinic Studies at Hebrew Union College, said Saturday. "Just a very thoughtful, wise person who listened unbelievably well, was just very intelligent."

Reform Judaism ordained its first female rabbi in 1972, and the Conservative movement followed in 1985. Orthodox Jews oppose the ordination of women. By 1987 there were 101 female Reform rabbis in the United States. Few of those women led their own congregations; however, most worked in social services, on college campuses or as assistant rabbis.

Rabbi Meyers, ordained in 1983 after graduating from Hebrew Union College in New York, was an assistant rabbi at a temple in Houston when Temple Sinai selected her.

Temple Sinai of Glendale, founded in 1928, flourished during Ms. Meyers' 15 years as rabbi. Membership grew from about 200 families to a high of about 300. Her monthly storytelling services for children packed the synagogue; education programs for children and adults were expanded; and interfaith families were welcomed.

Women in the pulpit are not so rare anymore. Rabbi Richard Schechter, who now heads Temple Sinai, said at least half of all graduating Reform seminary students these days are women.

"(Rabbi Meyers) was at the forefront of what was to come in Reform Judaism, where women were taking spiritual roles in leadership," he said.

Rabbi Meyers was born June 12, 1957, in Washington. She considered becoming a rabbi after her father died when she was 13 and she was comforted at her family's Reform synagogue.

She received a bachelor's degree in philosophy and Jewish studies from the University of Maryland in 1978, then enrolled at Hebrew Union College seminary.

She met her husband, then a lawyer, at Temple Sinai, and they married in 1990. They had two sons, Joe and Gus.

In addition to her husband and sons, she is survived by brothers Lawrence Meyers of Boynton Beach, Fla.; Eric Meyers and Philip Meyers, both of Potomac, Md.; a sister, Marian Fox of Columbia, Md., and her stepfather, Daniel Zwick of Washington. *